HTC One review: It’s now or never again

Its quad-core processor and "UltraPixel" camera could be HTC's return to greatness.

It’s been a hard year for HTC. The Taiwan-based phone manufacturer had a great beginning in the Android world, but it’s been struggling to keep up appearances and convince the public to buy its handsets. Some analysts believe that the HTC brand is in trouble and that the company's struggles stem partly from the public not really recognizing it as the maker of the Android handset to buy. Not anymore, at least.

Now that Samsung is in the top spot, HTC has a lot of ground to make up. The company's CEO, Peter Chou, famously said that he will step down if the One doesn't succeed, but the phone hasn't exactly had the best start: it has suffered manufacturing snafus caused by a component shortage, which came about partly because HTC is no longer considered a “tier-one customer” in manufacturing land. But in spite of branding and supply chain problems, the HTC One is still a very solid Android handset.

At 5.41 × 2.69 × 0.37 inches, the HTC One is only a bit bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S 4. Its smooth aluminum backside somewhat resembles the finish on Apple’s MacBook Pro, and it features white accents around the edges, with a few stripes continuing on the back and ending abruptly at the camera lens. It’s an interesting design, one that HTC says is made through “zero-gap” construction, a term that refers to the phone being carved out of a piece of aluminum (you'll find an image of the chassis design in our gallery below).

The One feels sturdy and well-built—more so than any of the plastic body phones I've used before. It’s also a testament to HTC’s marketing strategy: rather than dial it back to cut on costs, HTC has gone full-force by showing that its design capabilities mirror that of top-tier handset makers like Apple. What we have here is a fashionable and sturdy device; its aluminum chassis and matte white trim makes it look unlike any other Android handset on the market right now.

Inside, the HTC One features a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32 or 64 gigabytes of storage. Unfortunately, there is no microSD expansion slot, nor is there a removable backing. The micro-SIM slot sits on the left-hand side of the phone, with the volume rocker and power button on the right and top sides of the device, respectively. There is also a micro-USB slot on the bottom, though it's placed on the right side rather than in the middle as it is on most other handsets. One benefit to this minor design decision is that you can actually use the phone to type horizontally while it’s charging without bumping the cord.

The HTC One.

The HTC One.

The micro-USB port.

The One's power button and headphone jack.

A side view.

The One's two hardware buttons.

A closer look, with the screen off.

The ambient light and proximity sensor on the left and the 2.1MP front-facing camera on the right.

A backside view.

A look at the the HTC One's "zero-gap" body design.

The One has only two hardware buttons on the front of the handset: a back button and a Home button. HTC has eliminated the menu button, which other Android handsets use to bring up a variety of settings or options within applications. HTC hopes that this will be less confusing for consumers, but I can see this being more confusing for seasoned Android users who are used to navigating the interface with three buttons. Heck, I had a difficult time with the adjustment—I kept accidentally hitting the HTC logo to get to the home screen. Also, apps that require the menu key use the lower part of the screen for a virtual menu button, which completely negates the purpose of having hardware buttons in the first place. It feels like HTC is attempting to do good by starting a two-button trend, but because Google hasn't standardized it across Android handsets, it’s mostly a minor annoyance.

The One features dual speakers on both the top and bottom of the front side, and they produce a very powerful sound, due in part to the handset’s inclusion of Beats technology and an onboard amplifier. It’s nice to see handset speakers actually on the front side of the device and not tucked away on the back; the device doesn’t have to be laid face-down to stream NPR or to listen to a Spotify playlist. While Beats audio has typically been criticized for being nothing more than a marketing gimmick, I give HTC credit for incorporating a stereo-like sound in a device this size.

At 4.7-inches and 468 pixels per inch (ppi), the HTC One’s Super LCD 3 1080p display is vibrant, bright, and easy to read. Its IPS display incorporates SoLux technology, which is said to help improve viewing angles, picture quality, and outdoor visibility. Our side-by-side comparison of the One and the Galaxy S 4 displaying the same photo showed softer colors on the One, but the S 4 produced a more pure black because of the nature of the AMOLED display.

Overall, videos were a pleasure to watch on the One and the viewing angles made it easy for a group of friends to crowd around and peruse through Instagram together. The One's screen is also easier to see in the sun at full brightness than the Galaxy S 4, but it's still difficult to use it in direct sunlight.

Performance and battery life

As mentioned, the HTC One uses the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 SoC that’s featured in the Galaxy S 4 and Optimus G Pro, though the Galaxy S 4's clock speed is bumped up to 1.9Ghz.

Overall, the One feels speedy and responsive—even more so than the newly released Galaxy S 4, despite its minor speed bump. But the One lagged behind both the Galaxy S 4 and the Optimus G Pro in its benchmark tests. Interestingly, the One often edged out the Optimus in GLBenchmark, despite the two handsets sharing the same screen resolution and similar chips. Unfortunately, we didn't have LG's handset to do T-Rex HD benchmarks, which is GL Benchmark 2.7's updated test that has been re-calibrated to test more modern hardware. The Galaxy S 4 and HTC One performed similarly in these tests, with the One falling a bit behind in certain tests because of its slightly slower SoC.

The HTC One features a 2300 mAh battery pack; it looks like HTC has learned from its previous battery-capacity missteps with the Droid DNA, which contained a 2020 mAh battery pack to fuel its relatively massive 1080p display. The One obviously lasts much longer than its older sibling, and HTC has included some software tweaks that help preserve battery life when the phone isn't being used as a portable media center. You can switch on a power saving mode from the Notifications shade, which conserves CPU usage, reduces the screen brightness, turns off vibration feedback, and cuts off the data connection when the screen is off. This mode helped keep the phone running for more than two days without a charge, as it effectively puts the phone to sleep when it’s not in use.

With the conservative power settings off, however, the HTC One quickly burned through battery life, even as I was using the phone to snap photos and post to Instagram. I left the phone in standby overnight without this option selected and with about 50 percent left in battery life, and the phone needed a major recharge the next morning. I also streamed an hour and fifteen minutes of Sherlock at full brightness and full volume, and while it was a much more pleasant experience with this phone than with other phones I've used, the One used up about 30 percent of its battery life in that time.

Software, UI, and Apps

The HTC One runs Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean with its proprietary Sense 5 as the overlay. Unlike the Galaxy S 4, it doesn't sport the most recent iteration of Jelly Bean, so you’ll be missing out on software like the Quick Settings menu in the Notifications shade. At least you’ll still have Google Now, which is nicely integrated with the One and can be accessed by holding down the Home button.

Enlarge/ HTC's BlinkFeed borrows its aesthetic from Sense interfaces of the past—it still has that iconic clock, for instance—but it uses up a whole home screen as an information ticker.

Sense makes a bit of a mess of Android with its BlinkFeed, which takes over a home screen with unevenly sized tiles devoted to all of the different services you can hook up through Sense UI; this includes social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well as news from services like Flipboard. You can also set up BlinkFeed to pull in headlines from the Associated Press, ESPN, Moviefone, and about 1,400 other content partners. Unfortunately, this feature can’t be turned off completely.Update: Thanks to Ars reader utopia for pointing out that you can turn off BlinkFeed without rooting the One.

199 Reader Comments

My biggest issue with HTC is Sense. 90% of the UI I can deal with. Its the dialer app that drives me nuts. I honestly consider Google's AOSP dialer to be the best. Its UI is clean, fast, and not cluttered. The closest to that, that I've found is Samsung's TouchWiz. Sense's is just bastardized enough that it drove me nuts on my EVO 4G. Unless something has radically changed I'll most likely never go back to HTC.

What don't you like about the Sense dialer? If you describe it I'll tell you if it's still a "feature".

Hardware menu buttons don't take up screen space. Just because AOSP made it the norm to not include hardware buttons doesn't make it a good idea or better user experience.

Actually it does. With a hardware menu button, you have *ZERO* way to know if there is any functionality in the menus without first hitting the menu button. If nothing happens you don't immediately know if it's because there is no functionality, the key press was not received, or the ui is locked.

With the soft button, the menu button is only rendered when there is an actual menu behind it. It also only pops a row on the bottom if the app is targeting pre honeycomb. Otherwise it's rendered in the action bar.

Also, it becomes problematic when you design a good ui that takes advantage of screen orientation, etc, and yet you have fixed menu button that is disjoint. It isnt consistently in the same spot of the UI because everything else rotates except for the hw buttons.

Google did not just one day decide to get rid of menu button, and it certainly wasn't to promote multitasking. They did user testing and found this big user issue, and addressed it.

If Samsung wants to break spec and thinks having a menu button is better... Fine... But Samsung could at least properly implement the rest of the ui, because if you manually enable the soft buttons and disable the hw buttons, touchwiz apps still screw up because they hardcoded the screen size, and misrender the UI, overlapping the buttons. None of the non touch wiz apps do that.

I was waiting for this review, as I may upgrade from my HTC One X, but based on your review, it seems on the surface to be fairly beaten by the S4. However, on reading Anand's, frankly, far better review, I find out that no, it's not.

Please, make sure the reviewer at least *tries* to remove their bias before publishing this kind of tripe.

I can't imagine a situation where I would switch to Android. But if I were forced to, this would be the phone I would choose. It's not cheesy plastic. It REALLY looks nice. And it seems as if -- with a few exceptions -- it works fairly well.

Yah know. I'm really getting sick of the iCrowd ot even the WinCrowd equating plastic with cheap. Do you know what plastic does? Impact with the ground deadens the shock to a certain extent. Metal on the other hand will will vibrate the crap out of the rest of the phone. It doesn't stop radio signals, its lighter (In some cases this is a good thing.), its a hell of alot easier to form and mould. What your average person bitches about is the manufacturer's choice to go with shiny. That isn't a trait of plastic, its a choice by the manufacturer. Plastic is a viable choice when done right. And frankly its generally a moot point. PLastic vs metal is a moot point when most of the phones I see have a PLASTIC case around the phone.

There's something about this article that makes it read more like a spec-sheet rundown rather than a review.

Anyway, I find the lack of a menu button, the fact that the power button is situated on the top of the device, and the lack of a removable battery to be the most disappointing elements of the phone. Having said that, I do like the phone very much - I just have to get used to the inconsistency of the Android OS (though some of it may well be because I have been using an iPhone for so long).

I don't understand. A review requires both worded and statistic experience and this has it. You have to notice that your beloved iDevice fails on both in any forms and through out its history. I seriously don't understand this.

Normal consumers don't buy HTC because 'Galaxy' has become synonymous with Android for most people.

Geeks don't buy HTC because they know it won't get updates.

Where is the evidence for your last assertion? According to Ars Technica when evaluating updates by phone manufactures, "[HTC] has been the overall winner in terms of getting updates out to users quickly." Ars compared the various phone manufactures, including Samsung.

I was waiting for this review, as I may upgrade from my HTC One X, but based on your review, it seems on the surface to be fairly beaten by the S4. However, on reading Anand's, frankly, far better review, I find out that no, it's not.

Please, make sure the reviewer at least *tries* to remove their bias before publishing this kind of tripe.

So, why don't you just get the phone since you've already read a better review? And, it's only unbias if she favors the HTC One rather than the S4? First world problems..

It is a remarkably beautiful device. The camera is arguably the best in Android-land, but that's primarily based on your usage scenario. It does take very nice bar photos though. The screen is very good. The device is fast. The sound is loud and clear, once you watch a clip or play a game on it you will see. I suggest you read up the review on Anandtech .

Unlike the author I have always disliked TouchWiz, with its bad design language and Samsung's tendency to add complexity to score bullet points. Sense 5 is a very clean, almost Zen-like interface. I dare say it is cleaner than stock Android. I like my Nexus devices fine, but Sense is very very elegant.

The iphone 5, Nokia Lumia 920, HTC 8X, Samsung Note 2 and the Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z, the LG Nexus 4 and the HTC One are all very very good devices today. And their merits will depend on primarily your tastes and preferences, you won't do much wrong by going with any of them. All of them have their relative weaknesses and strengths and special combo moves.

My biggest issue with HTC is Sense. 90% of the UI I can deal with. Its the dialer app that drives me nuts. I honestly consider Google's AOSP dialer to be the best. Its UI is clean, fast, and not cluttered. The closest to that, that I've found is Samsung's TouchWiz. Sense's is just bastardized enough that it drove me nuts on my EVO 4G. Unless something has radically changed I'll most likely never go back to HTC.

What don't you like about the Sense dialer? If you describe it I'll tell you if it's still a "feature".

Whatever else you can say about HTC, the dialer has always been top notch. And the AOSP dialer still does not have smart dialing. Smart dialing is a Good Thing.

I was waiting for this review, as I may upgrade from my HTC One X, but based on your review, it seems on the surface to be fairly beaten by the S4. However, on reading Anand's, frankly, far better review, I find out that no, it's not.

Please, make sure the reviewer at least *tries* to remove their bias before publishing this kind of tripe.

So, why don't you just get the phone since you've already read a better review? And, it's only unbias if she favors the HTC One rather than the S4? First world problems..

No, it's unbiased if there is no obvious favour for either camp. Sadly, in this review, there is an obvious favour, which is a pity, as I generally like this authors articles. You can drop the "first world problems" meme. This is a Technology oriented site, reviewing a flagship phone, do you think I should pick up an old Nokia 3310, or better yet, Nokia RinGo, to show some humility? I wanted to read Ars' review of this, before I decided what phone to get, and I was left disappointed by the review, so what exactly does this "first world problems" crap have to do with it?

Having used both the HTC One and the Galaxy S4 as part of a media pre-release program, I would pick the HTC One as a daily driver. The front-facing speakers are a huge win for me, and I love the fit and finish of the body. I actually DO like BlinkFeed, though I'm glad that folks have found a way to remove it.

The S4 feels like a weak iteration in comparison. It's... alright, I suppose, but we've seen it before and there's very little about it that's exciting. HTC has made an effort with both hardware and software design to innovate and create something new, and they have produced the better phone for it.

I can't imagine a situation where I would switch to Android. But if I were forced to, this would be the phone I would choose. It's not cheesy plastic. It REALLY looks nice. And it seems as if -- with a few exceptions -- it works fairly well.

Yah know. I'm really getting sick of the iCrowd ot even the WinCrowd equating plastic with cheap. Do you know what plastic does? Impact with the ground deadens the shock to a certain extent. Metal on the other hand will will vibrate the crap out of the rest of the phone. It doesn't stop radio signals, its lighter (In some cases this is a good thing.), its a hell of alot easier to form and mould. What your average person bitches about is the manufacturer's choice to go with shiny. That isn't a trait of plastic, its a choice by the manufacturer. Plastic is a viable choice when done right. And frankly its generally a moot point. PLastic vs metal is a moot point when most of the phones I see have a PLASTIC case around the phone.

You're attacking a non-existent point here; note the choice of 'cheesy plastic' over 'plastic'. Even assuming that this was what was actually said, you've already deemed it a moot point, so this whole post just comes across as "HOW DARE YOU SPEND SEVERAL HUNDRED DOLLARS ON A DEVICE YOU'LL ALWAYS HAVE ON YOUR PERSON AND BE USING ON A FAIRLY CONSTANT BASIS WITHOUT CONSULTING ME?"

And frankly the days of the removable battery and expanded storage are probably numbered anyway.

Are you kidding?

There are only two kinds of people that would say something like that - trolls or dedicated, hardcore Apple fanboys who have to attack good positions just to assuage their own self-conscious disappointment in a lacking product feature. If expandable storage's "days are numbered," then hardware manufacturers are actively giving consumers the finger.

With regard to bias, I didn't pick up on any. If I did, I didn't care. Are we all not biased to some degree? I am biased toward Samsung, but I read the One review with an open mind. (I'm still completely unwilling to own one if I can't get signal on it because of where I live. That is non-negotiable. But I can still appreciate it more, or less, and that's what I was open to.)

The best dialer is still Contacts+, and you can get that on any Android phone. The dialer is similar to Sense's and TouchWiz's, but what really works about it is its 3-page interface with messaging, then contacts, and call logs on the right. The dialer comes up over the contacts, and is searchable. You can even use numbers, and it will search the phone numbers themselves, as well as the alphabet using T9 (e.g. "666" will suggest "Mom"). It's the best one, it's free, it's updated often and was updated in the past week... oh and it has the WhatsApp feature where you can IM for free with your phone number, and had it before WhatsApp became a thing. (And I couldn't care less because I have unlimited SMS/MMS. And I have no friends with either Contacts+ or WhatsApp -- I have tried both.)

I was waiting for this review, as I may upgrade from my HTC One X, but based on your review, it seems on the surface to be fairly beaten by the S4. However, on reading Anand's, frankly, far better review, I find out that no, it's not.

Please, make sure the reviewer at least *tries* to remove their bias before publishing this kind of tripe.

Agree with you 100%.

After reading this 'review' I'm glad that I canceled my Ars subscription.

And frankly the days of the removable battery and expanded storage are probably numbered anyway.

Are you kidding?

There are only two kinds of people that would say something like that - trolls or dedicated, hardcore Apple fanboys who have to attack good positions just to assuage their own self-conscious disappointment in a lacking product feature. If expandable storage's "days are numbered," then hardware manufacturers are actively giving consumers the finger.

What's unusual about basically every player in the mobile industry giving consumers the finger? Par for the course really...

For a review of a phone that touts its low light photography (but with only 3MP in 4:3 photos / it has a 16:9 sensor) abilities I think you really have to do a photo comparison with iPhone 5 and Xperia Z which also take excellent low light photos but with a much higher megapixel count

Yah know. I'm really getting sick of the iCrowd ot even the WinCrowd equating plastic with cheap. Do you know what plastic does? Impact with the ground deadens the shock to a certain extent. Metal on the other hand will will vibrate the crap out of the rest of the phone. It doesn't stop radio signals, its lighter (In some cases this is a good thing.), its a hell of alot easier to form and mould. What your average person bitches about is the manufacturer's choice to go with shiny. That isn't a trait of plastic, its a choice by the manufacturer. Plastic is a viable choice when done right. And frankly its generally a moot point. PLastic vs metal is a moot point when most of the phones I see have a PLASTIC case around the phone.

Well, as to plastic being better when the phone is dropped, then why not rubber?

Honestly, I do understand your point about the manufacturer's choice to make it look (IMO) bad by making it look shiny. But that was sort of my point. I haven't held the HTC One obviously, but I like the fit and finish of the phone, as opposed to the GS4.

This wasn't a pro-Apple post or an anti-Samsung post, or anything like that. I was basically just saying that HTC nailed it when they designed this phone.

These are very nice, apparently the camera is just a post processing tweak away from being very good indeed.

Thanks! I would also say that on the screen of the phone, the photos look great even untweaked. They're not as nice on a regular display without the tweaks though. I suspect that 4.7" or 5" 1080p screens make photos look amazing on the device itself.

I got one, and I like it so far, overall. But there are two things that are bugging me. The first one and it is really big one is the blinkfeed. Sure, you can hide it on the 7th leftmost screen, but why? I don't want it, I don't care for it, I just want it G.O.N.E! Why should it consume even 1 byte of RAM, waiting to be activated? It will not, and it is my device, darn it! The second thing that bugs me is that the lack of the 'settings' shade present in CyanogenMod since 7, and in Galaxy S III. One drag down and I have quick-click access to wifi, bluetooth, airplane, etc. Yes, I can add buttons and power strips but why should I clutter a whole page with what could be conveniently available with one simple gesture?

I like the included music player (PowerAmp started to get on my nerves with the latest quirks), and the several utilities that I've purchased over time are now part of the base image: turning off RF when sleeping (Juice Defender), flashlight, PDF reader, Office suite.

[Edit:] Also, the speakers are fantastic. They are by far the best I've heard from a phone. And they face the listener unlike more phones with lesser speakers, made worse by the table or covering.

The second thing that bugs me is that the lack of the 'settings' shade present in CyanogenMod since 7, and in Galaxy S III. One drag down and I have quick-click access to wifi, bluetooth, airplane, etc. Yes, I can add buttons and power strips but why should I clutter a whole page with what could be conveniently available with one simple gesture?

This is one feature that I hope that Jony Ive ads to iOS 7. Maybe I just access various settings more than most, but it would be nice to not have to go to the home page, click on Settings, etc.

I realize most people are interested in the "smart" part of smartphones but you really should give us just a bit more about how it is to use, you know, as a phone. I've read elsewhere that the materials and shape make it horrible to hold. True or false?

It seems fine to me, a tad more substantial and easy to hold than the Galaxy S III (wife's phone). My previous one was the T-Mobile G2 (also by HTC), which had a more stout build (narrower, shorter by thicker and heavier, due to the keyboard).

Yah know. I'm really getting sick of the iCrowd ot even the WinCrowd equating plastic with cheap. Do you know what plastic does? Impact with the ground deadens the shock to a certain extent. Metal on the other hand will will vibrate the crap out of the rest of the phone. It doesn't stop radio signals, its lighter (In some cases this is a good thing.), its a hell of alot easier to form and mould. What your average person bitches about is the manufacturer's choice to go with shiny. That isn't a trait of plastic, its a choice by the manufacturer. Plastic is a viable choice when done right. And frankly its generally a moot point. PLastic vs metal is a moot point when most of the phones I see have a PLASTIC case around the phone.

Oh, and the argument about plastic being lighter, while technically true in most cases, is a little bit misleading. The difference in weight between the SGS4 and the HTC One is less than half an ounce. I really doubt that 99.9% of the population could notice such small difference.

I'm loving the idea of dual front-facing speakers, extra amplification (hope it works over headphones, too!), the much larger camera lens, and actual 2-day battery life. I hope these catch-on, and I can find them in some other phone, because I'm not interested in a giant screen, lack of a microSD card slot, inability to swap/upgrade batteries, or the lack of a physical keyboard.

Yup. I've owned the nexus one and the incredible 2. Both devices, *and their warranty replacements*, failed due to defective hardware. (That's four devices in a row). In the case of the nexus one it was particularly egregious: the power button connection was flimsy and wore out with regular use.

On the flipside of that argument, my N1 is still going strong and all the buttons work just as well as they did the day I purchased it back in March of 2010. About the only annoyance at this point is its severe lack of internal storage space, but it's still my daily driver.

I'm intrigued by the HTC One, but probably not enough to upgrade just yet. I think I'm going to hold out for the Nexus Five, whenever it's released. My wife, however, wants to upgrade her S2, so I might have her check this one out. It looks like a possible alternate to the S4 she's lusting after at the moment.

Yeah, I've since moved up to a One S (which I really like) but my stepson is using my old Desire (which is an N1 for all intents and purposes) every day. Yes it's rooted and runs CM 7.2, but it still holds up quite well. There are a few hacks to treat SD card storage as internal storage that help out on the app side, though I do find it staggering that Google didn't see the amount of app bloat that the poorer programmers (looking at you, Facebook) would output. It was to their spec, after all.

as i'm sure others have said, The menu button removal IS standardized across android. Look at either of the last 2 nexus phones and you'll see the change. The issue you're seeing with the black bar is where app developers have not moved to the new google standard. I would really appreicate it if this article reflected the fact that google was the originator of this change and not HTC.

I should note that while a short-term test, I'm loving my HTC-ONE, but not the double-dip flip case which I bought with it, which scratched the back (very slightly) due to the sliding action and tight fit.

I've played with one. Short of owning a iPhone 5, the HTC One is the best smartphone on the market. While HTC can't do much about built-in spyware from Google, with whatever cookies, calendars, interests and other personal behavior being surreptitiously auto-reported to 'Big Brother' Google, its hardware design is second only to one and HTC One has narrowed that gap delightfully for consumers.

If the HTC One ran a product OS, made by a product company, (come on Microsoft, or Blackberry, or some product house) rather than an advertising / spyware company like Google-Facebook, then this phone would likely already be in my pocket, I like it that much.

I'm thrilled to see a handset maker produce such a thing of beauty. Its slim, feels great, and performs like the fit and finish lead you to believe it will.

HTC should consider designing a 1/4 sized, similarly finished extended battery back that could be easily added. I use one now with my mobile devices and it offers me an additional 2x the energy storage, really extending the usefulness of my mobile devices. I paid $35 for a nicely designed one, although nothing like the HTC's design and finish. $50-$75 would be my price point for an addon battery.

Finally, if the Unix for Smartphones community would tear the anti-privacy crud off of an OS that fit on the HTC One, and left it as an entirely open development platform for mobile apps, I'd buy one today.

Today's Google-Unix for smartphones is so convoluted, the friction to developing real, privacy respecting products on a real product OS is just impossible. And that is making Microsoft and Apple really happy, as the largest product makers take on the largest advertising/spyware makers - Facebook and Google.

If the HTC One ran a product OS, made by a product company, (come on Microsoft, or Blackberry, or some product house) rather than an advertising / spyware company like Google-Facebook, then this phone would likely already be in my pocket, I like it that much.

And would kill HTC because neither Blackberry nor Microsoft OS' are strong enough in the market.People don't buy phones - they buy operating systems and just like any other computer, it's operating system first, hardware second. Android and iOS are the big boys on the block and Microsoft and Blackberry can barely compete. And I fully expect Blackberry to go under once DoD gives approval to use iOS for government purposes.

If the HTC One ran a product OS, made by a product company, (come on Microsoft, or Blackberry, or some product house) rather than an advertising / spyware company like Google-Facebook, then this phone would likely already be in my pocket, I like it that much.

If you're that paranoid, you can use an android phone without signing into a Google account. It limits its functionality, but you have the option. Not sure how you're tying Facebook into this, it's not really relevant or necessary in any way.

Alternatively, you can create a dummy account if you want access to the play store.

The article mentions prices at a few places, I clicked on the hyperlinked $99 for T-Mobile. When I got there it was $99 plus $20/month for 24 months JUST FOR THE PHONE. The $99 come-on was the down payment. Add on data and voice and you gotta be crazy to pay such a steep price for a damned phone.

T-Mobile finances phones at zero percent for their users.

The advantage comes from T-Mobile's plans being both cheaper and having unlimited data, and the fact that once you finish paying off the phone, you get to stop paying for it.

In comparison, long after you have completely paid off your phone at AT&T and Verizon, your monthly bill doesn't go down at all.

Heck, even if you bring your own existing device that is fully paid for to AT&T or Verizon when you sign up, they don't reduce the rate you pay monthly to make up for that.

The only downside is that they don't have as good of coverage outside of cities, compared to AT&T. As much as I would like to jump over to t-mobile for the unlimited data, there LTE in Washington DC is spotty based on my experience (as well as their refarmed 1900 3g band).You honestly have to take all factors in consideration when choosing a carrier. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

I used to be part of the SD complaint brigade, having come to Android by way of phones with vast amounts of internal memory (the phone immediately prior to the Gnex had 32GB internal plus a microsd slot, but was a brick). That said, I have come to realize that with modern networks, I don't need that much internally. The only time 16GB is limiting on my N4, for example, is on an airplane. For that I have a $3 USB-OTG cable and a 64GB USB thumb drive.

I think it's fantastic that HTC has built a really top quality phone, hardware-wise. Nokia (on their symbian-based Eseries devices) and Apple have long been the only ones who design truly solid phones on a reasonably consistent basis. However, Apple and now HTC are completely full of shit when they say they can't make a solid phone with a removable back cover. Never picked up an E71, I guess.

Also nice to see someone paying more than lip service to speaker quality. It was patently ridiculous that Nokia's 5800 was the most recent phone to include decent speakers. It was released in something like 2006. Sadly, Nokia chose to stop building really great phones for a while. Their stubbornness in refusing to leave Symbian and letting the third-rate manufacturers lock up the Android market left us with a series of barely passable phones from a build-quality perspective. Only in the last couple of years have Samsung and HTC figured out how to assemble a phone in such a way that it doesn't feel cheap and fragile in the hand. Glad they finally made it. Hopefully they keep doing it.

I should point out as a owner of both of the htc one and the nexus 4, the nexus 4 *does not support USB-OTG, though the htc one does.

Florence Ion / Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.